


That Uncertain Future (Bonus Drabbles)

by oorsprong



Series: That Unsteady Afterglow [15]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon, dark future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-05-25 06:03:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6183511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oorsprong/pseuds/oorsprong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When fate and the Jedi catch up to Kylo Ren he is forced to confront his last human weakness.</p><p>Here is a possible future that is set ten years after the events in TFA and six years after the events of That Ever-Present Afterglow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. That Uncertain Future

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 8/7 update: please enjoy the tremendous art Katherine did for this chapter on her tumblr [here](http://katherine1753.tumblr.com/post/148516349119/jedi-can-you-fix-him-that-unsteady), it is truly amazing!

She waits.  And she watches.  Waits for a sign.  Waits.

 

Rey raises her saber and prepares to strike when her quarry reels around and flees the throne room of the First Order flagship, Leviathan.

 

She blinks, exhales shakily.

 

Outside a bloodbath rages as the resistance’s surviving fighters are mowed down by blaster fire.  She feels the life energy of two of them leave in a gut-punch of awareness.  Her training prepared her for it but it doesn’t stop the pain.  Training only makes it easier to compartmentalize.  Jedi still feel everything.  She clutches her saber like a lifeline as alarms scream around them and the lights flicker.  

 

Suspicious, she makes her way out into the corridor.

 

For a moment she doesn’t understand what she’s looking it.  Ren kneels with his back to her, his cape gracelessly dragging on the floor as he makes frantic motions over something below him.  Warning bells go off inside her, telling her to look, to examine, to not underestimate this creature.  But does he even notice her standing there with the saber in hand?

 

An ugly choking sound comes out of him as he pitches forward onto his hands and knees.  For the first time she notices the crumpled figure on the floor below him.  Steadily, as one might approach a dangerous predator, she inches over in combat stance with her blade at the ready.  There is a man lying there beneath Ren.  His blood pools on the metal floor from what looks to be a chest wound.  He isn’t wearing a uniform or any type of designation.

 

Ren whirls around and locks eyes with Rey and she fights against the inner voice screaming at her to flee.  What looks at her is barely human.  His eyes are shot with red and darting frantically like a trapped animal’s.

 

“Jedi?” a strangled voice croaks.  It’s heavy with power but the rage that confronted her in the throne room is missing.  “Jedi… can you fix him?”  

 

He gestures at the dying man below him.  The figure is motionless, curled up in a heap.  He might already be dead.  She would reach out with the force but she’s terrified.  

  
“Jedi…” Ren says, softly, sounding almost human.  “Can you _fix_ him?”

 

She stares into the eyes of the monster that pushed her violently into her new life and proceeded to take away everything good in it over the course of ten long years.  The dying man shifts.  Not dead, then.  Soon, maybe.  Ren reaches down with one ghastly pale hand and touches the dying man’s face, runs fingers through red hair gone gray at the temples.

 

“Please, Rey.  Please fix him.”

 

A trap.  It’s all a trap.  Her instinct to run over, to help, to heal… it wars with all logical thought.

 

“Who is that?” she snaps, fighting to keep tremble out of her voice.  Her saber is still armed and at the ready but Ren isn’t holding his.  Not that it means anything.

 

“Save him, Jedi.  It’s beyond my power.”  There’s nothing in that voice but despair.

 

“Ren…” she says.

 

“Ben,” she adds.

 

She watches.  And she waits.  No one is there to tell her what to do.  

 

In that corridor she feels the course of her life shifting below her like sinking sand.  One false step and she’ll be dragged under.

 

She waits.  And she watches.  Waits for a sign.  Waits.

 

***

  


The small freighter was never meant to go into battle.  Re-purposed hastily for the needs of a desperate group of resistance fighters it holds it’s own, but what it really excels at is running.  This ship is built for a war they’ve already lost.

 

The monster slumps in a corner while she pilots.  If the others made it out alive she’ll reconnect with them later.  Later is the word on everyone’s lips.  Later victory will come because it has to, doesn’t it?  Justice and truth and goodness have to prevail.  The thought of another dark age of Imperial rule is too heinous to contemplate.  But she's contemplating it just the same.

 

“What makes you think I won’t pilot us into a star?” she hisses, hoping he’ll hear and knowing he won’t.

 

“Rey,” he says bleakly.  He’s taken to using her name now.  Is it a tactic to earn pity?  Luke would know.  Luke knew him better than anyone else, they say.

 

“He’s in hypovolemic shock!  Keep him still!  I’ve done all I can!”  She spits out this last as a curse.  She’s cursing herself.  Why did she have to do anything at all?  

 

“Is he going to die?” Ren asks for the third time in as many minutes.

 

“Maybe,” she says.  Probably, she thinks, but why not give him hope while her life is in his hands.  She could have killed him.  It’s easy to kill a man who won’t fight back.  But at what cost?  If she and Luke are the last of the Jedi then she has to protect the legacy.  She can’t do that after she’s killed in cold blood.

 

She sets coordinates and goes back to hover around Ren and the dying man.  The medical equipment on board has patched the wound but it’s ugly.  He’s been stabbed.  She tries not to think about the how or why of it.  Too much of his blood has spilled already.  Rey staunched the flow as best she could.  She even used her small gift of healing to bring him back from the brink but she’s given him hours instead of minutes.  Maybe.

 

“Who is this man?”

 

Ren gazes up at her.  His eyes look almost normal again.

 

“This is my husband,” he says quietly.

 

She fails to stifle the uncontrollable urge to laugh.  It comes out of her, a short high-pitched sound that speaks more to her fear and discomfort than any real mirth.  The monster has a husband.  Someone cares for this… abomination.  Or at least the abomination cares for him.  It’s too surreal.

 

If he’s offended he doesn’t show it.  He only stares back at her with those pathetic eyes.

 

“If he dies,” he says, licking his lips in a gesture that strikes her as almost reptilian, “I’ll kill you.”

 

“I know,” Rey says.  

  


***

 

In the end he lives.  

 

Rey’s powers have either grown or this Hux is too damn stubborn to let go of his life.  The backwater waystation where they land has a serviceable infirmary staffed with a medical droid.  People here don’t ask questions.  Ren is hidden by his cloak and her Jedi robes are irrelevant to the locals.  She pays them off in credits because Ren has nothing to his name and nothing to barter with. 

 

Rey is certain that Leia will never forgive her for what she’s about to do but one thing that Jedi training has taught her is patience.  Luke’s mentor, Obi-Wan, waited nearly twenty years before he could make his move against the Empire.  How does a person live in seclusion for twenty years with his hopes pinned on the willingness of a child to face an impossible destiny?

 

She touches her belly, makes a soothing noise more for her own benefit and stands from the bench she’s been resting on.  She’s just going to have to find that out for herself.

 

Hux-- the former General, she’s learned to her distaste-- is sitting up in the bed with assistance from Ren.  More accurately he’s being cradled in Ren’s arms.  His color is returning but his looks suggest him to be older than his years.  Interesting that war exacts a toll on the victors too.

 

She watches as Hux reaches out to lay a hand on Ren’s chest right over the chain necklace he wears, prompting a smile from Ren that completely transforms his face. _This_ is Ben Organa, she thinks.  She pushes the thought away before it can destroy her resolve.  She can’t watch this.  The sight of Kylo Ren, bane of the resistance, caressing his partner’s cheek as he pulls him close is so at odds with her vision of the monster that has murdered so many of her comrades that it makes her physically ill to see it.  

 

She clears her throat.

 

“Now what?”

 

“Now we leave you, Jedi.”  Ren doesn’t deign to look at her.  He only has eyes for this sad creature whose life she already regrets saving.

 

“Now we bargain,” Rey counters.  If he thinks he’s going to go back into the fray as though this is some child’s game where a truce is called for a scraped knee he’s sorely mistaken.

 

Ren turns to face her with a look that suggests she’s a mere annoyance-- some pesky insect bothering him.  His hubris disgusts her.

 

“You saved his life.  I’ll save yours.  Leave while you can.”

 

“I don’t think so, _Ben_.”  She’s pleased by the glimmer of rage that crosses his face.  “You aren’t going to just walk away from this without offering me something of value in return.”

 

“What do you want, Jedi?”

 

Rey takes a deep breath and steadies herself in the force.  “I want you to leave us alone.  We’ll go into hiding; Master Skywalker, General Organa, my--... our families.  Our friends.  You won’t hunt us down.  You won’t look for us at all.  Is that understood?”

 

Ren offers her a cold smile.  “A retreat?  Such a small boon for your dying cause.  Go then.  Tell Organa she’s safe so long as I never have to see her face again.”

 

They stare at each other for a long moment.

 

“I’m taking the freighter,” Rey says matter-of-factly.  She’s not sure why.  By rights it’s her ship.

 

“Very well.”

 

Rey nods.  There’s nothing left to say.  She adjusts her robes and lifts the hood over her head.

 

“Rey,” he calls out as she reaches the doorway.

 

She turns and narrows her eyes.  “What?”

 

“When she’s old enough she’ll know where to find me.”  There’s no malice in his voice, only a cold certainty that chills her.  He knows.  She looks him dead in the eye.

 

“She’ll find you, Kylo Ren.  I promise you that."

 

She refuses to spare him a second glance as she walks out into the dark.  She'll wait.  She'll watch.  She'll wait for a sign.

 

She's good at waiting.

 


	2. Small Comforts

“That was a bad bargain you made.”

 

Brendol lies in the hospital bed still hooked to an IV. Another day in recovery and they’ll move on from this damnable planet.

 

“She didn’t take what I offered her.”

 

His life. It goes without saying.

 

“That was foolish. Don’t misunderstand me, I appreciate what you’ve done to keep me alive but I worry that you’ve lost your ability to prioritize.”

 

He doesn’t even know what to say to that.

 

“Ren,” Brendol adds gently, “it’s no good if we both get killed.”

 

“What’s my life worth without you in it?” Kylo says, unable to meet his eyes.

 

Normally Brendol won’t indulge this kind of talk but he surprises him by patting the edge of the bed in a clear invitation.

 

Kylo obediently sits in the chair adjacent to the bed. He wants to be up there in bed with him as close as he can physically get, but he practices as much restraint as he’s capable of. His husband needs to heal.

 

He leans in as Brendol reaches out to touch his face and trace the line of his scar. Kylo’s suddenly self-conscious about how he must look having spent only minimal attention to self-care since they landed.

 

As if sensing the thought Brendol slips his hand around the back of his neck and pulls him close.

 

“Come here, Handsome,” he murmurs before their lips meet.

 

Warmed by the endearment, Kylo hums into the kiss and pulls back with a smile. The last remnants of the knot of rage and despair that settled in his stomach at seeing Brendol lying motionless in that cold corridor loosen and slip away.

 

“It’s a shame that hunting down your former family is off the table. I was rather looking forward to delivering them into your hands. Another few months and I might have managed.”

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Kylo says with a sigh. He absently smooths Brendol’s hair back into place where it’s ruffled up, dismayed to notice that the gray at his temples does indeed seem to be creeping into the rest of his fiery hair. It’s actually a bit more white than gray. He pushes a lock of it aside to peer at the roots, momentarily fascinated.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

“You’re getting old.”

 

Brendol lets out a sharp bark of a laugh.

 

“So are you.”

 

“It’s not the same, is it?” Kylo murmurs.

 

“No. Which is why it’s even more important you take care of yourself. It comforts me that you’ll outlive me.”

 

“Selfish,” Kylo says with a half-smile.

 

“Yes, it is, isn’t it? But it will be a damn sight easier to go into the dark knowing you’re safe. Don’t take that from me.”

 

Kylo pushes the sudden ache that wells up in him as far down as it will go. This cruel reminder of his husband’s own mortality has thrown him off balance. He needs to meditate. In a more visceral way he needs to touch every inch of Brendol's body to reassure himself that he’s truly out of harm’s way.

 

He leans down and plants a kiss on that lightly furrowed brow and then rests his head against his husband’s for a moment. He wants nothing more than to crawl under those flimsy sheets and listen to the beat of his heart. He knows Brendol wants that too; can hear it at the edges of his thoughts. Hard to separate their thoughts when they’re this close. Brendol is sharing all the gratitude he can’t voice along with his own frustration at being confined to the bed.

 

“When we get back we’re going to have to explain ourselves. You realize that, don’t you? Fiiranza expected you to finish that jedi.”

 

Brendol won’t call her Empress. It’s too new and her reign may be short lived if the shifting factions within the First Order have their way. Kylo doesn’t have much of a head for politics but he sees this clearly enough.

  
“I don’t have to explain myself to anyone.”

 

“You’re so short-sighted,” his husband says, but there’s a hint of fondness in it. A part of him revels in the trust Kylo has in him, that he turned over long-term planning for both of them long ago.

 

“Go and center yourself,” Brendol says finally. “It won’t do us any good to return with all that… energy.” He won’t mention the dark side. He never does.

 

Kylo presses a kiss to the inside of one delicate wrist. There’s frailty there that used to charm him. Now it’s a persistent reminder of how easy it is to break a body. How can the powerful bond between them depend on these flimsy mortal frames?

 

“If you call, I’ll hear you,” he promises before taking his leave, glad to offer this lone certainty; this small comfort.

 

Sometimes small comforts are the ones worth holding on to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 8/13 edit: [Go here](https://gentleman-caller.tumblr.com/post/148662981514/katherine1753-he-leans-down-and-plants-a-kiss) to see Katherine's rendition of this chapter. She has done an amazing job as always!


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